Discussion USB Gecko Loader

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May 1, 2016
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I have been studying the USB Gecko design and I wanted to make a specialized version for GC USB loading. The first step is to replace with FT245RL IC with something more geared towards embedded rather than PC communication. I was thinking something like the 74LV165A or the 74HC165 to break the 8-bit parallel out to serial. Then from there it wouldn't be too hard to attach something like a PIC 24FJ64GB002 to do the USB host to Gecko serial communication using a modified version of @emu_kidid swissserver.

I'm not really a hardware guy, I'm more of a VHDL and C programmer. I'll do fine with writing the software and it won't be too hard to redesign the board to replace the FTDI chip and USB mini socket. I just need advice on which are the right IC's to pick. Right now I'm not sure if the 74XX165 family is capable of bidirectional serial. Of course I could just link the FPGA straight to the PIC and do the parallel communication from there but a dedicated IC would be a lot less code.

Any thoughts or tips on this project would be greatly appreciated, I'll order some chips and breadboard out a USB Gecko and convert this to a workload next week.
 
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May 1, 2016
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Motivation for this project was finding a way to do USB loading on the gamecube.

My first idea was to link an SD Gecko or WiiKey to the Mobidapter (USB to SD adapter) but that was a very bulky and expensive route to reach a 32GB maximum thanks to SDHC limits.

Then I thought why not link up a Raspberry Pi Zero to an USB Gecko and then under-clock it as low as possible while running swissserver on the mounted USB device. This idea was a lot better but it was still bulky and a bit of a round about solution.

Then I realized all the Pi Zero would be doing in that setup is communicating a USB->Serial device with a Mass storage drive. The same could be achieved with a Microprocessor communicating Serial to a USB host. So now I'm looking to do just that. Instead of being sensible and using a Raspberry Pi Zero I'm being an idiot and remaking the USB Gecko to work as a Host rather than a Slave.
 
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